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42 they will carry with them internal evidence, that they have not been contaminated by any attempt at artificial heightening, or by the vain conceit of piecing out an imperfect sentiment from confused ideas and half-formed sentences. I may have erred on the side of partiality; but it has been my sincere wish, to draw a portrait from the life, and to take nature for my standard, neither working up the tone into a meretricious glare, nor enlarging the dimensions of the design.

Of all the features I have to delineate, there is none so striking, as a pious tendency of thought, perhaps unexampled at his early period of life. The following pages will bear so frequent testimony to the truth of this, that it will be unnecessary to enlarge upon it here. It may not however be impertinent to observe, upon a part of his history, open to suspicion with a certain class of readers, that this train of reflection accrued to him principally from his own internal feelings. It would have been profane